NEW YORK, NY.- Aperture and Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, and 7|G Foundation, announced Tommy Kha as recipient of the 2021 Next Step Award.

Kha will receive a $10,000 artist’s grant and publish a photobook with Aperture, accompanied by an exhibition at Baxter St at CCNY.

The Next Step Award supports US-based artists at critical junctures in their artistic development. Reconsidering equity across the country and in arts institutions, the award also supports the presentation of diverse opinions, as well as timely lens-based work that is relevant to today’s visual culture and society across a wide array of genres or approaches.

“Baxter St’s ongoing support of Tommy Kha’s artistic development, from workspace resident in 2018 to now, underscores Baxter St as an incubator that identifies and supports strong emerging or evolving voices deserving of greater recognition,” says Jil Weinstock, director of Baxter St. “Kha’s work distinguishes itself for his rigorous and complex approach to self-portraiture that poignantly explores the confluence of identity, connection, and belonging. We are thrilled to see how his practice will evolve with the Next Step Award and Baxter St’s ongoing support during this critical stage in his development.”

Tommy Kha has been granted this award for his series Soft Murders, a collection of several ongoing and interrelated bodies of works, including Canada 1984, Facades, Half Self-Portraits, South Portraits, and Yellow Pearl. Kha says that his interest lies in “the disjointed mapping of Asian diaspora, set primarily against the backdrop of the American South,” filtered through his family’s history of fleeing countries and wars.

“Our appreciation for Tommy Kha’s achievements and our conviction that he is ideally positioned for the Next Step Award is underscored by the fact that he was recommended by several of the distinguished individuals we invited to join our nominating committee,” says Sarah Meister, Aperture’s executive director. “Aperture is delighted to continue this partnership with Baxter St and 7|G to expand the ways we support emerging voices in the field.”

Kha was chosen out of an extremely competitive list of artists, nominated by a diverse group of artists and curators who brought expertise and artistic experience to the selection process. The nomination committee included Derrick Adams, Zalika Azim, Sergio Bessa, Antawan I. Byrd, Jesse Chan, Ivan Forde, Lyle Ashton Harris, Sheree Hovsepian, Sarah Kennel, Amanda Maddox, Marvin Orellana, Nandita Raman, Legacy Russell, Phil Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, Eugenie Tsai, Diya Vij, and Jessie Wender.

The roster of nominated artists who submitted to the prize included David Alekhuogie, Matías Alvial, Zalika Azim, Nathan Bajar, Jonas Becker, Chris Berntsen, Kennedi Carter, Pradeep Dalal, Dominique Duroseau, Lloyd Foster, Genevieve Gaignard, Camilo Godoy, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Sandy Kim, Clifford Prince King, Bria Lauren, Ian Lewandowski, Joshua Rashaad McFadden, Azikiwe Mohammed, Pau Pescador, Stephanie Powell, Susannah Ray, Jacqueline Silberbush, Dianne Smith, Meg Turner, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, and Suné Woods.




Tommy Kha (born in Memphis, 1988) received his MFA in photography from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. He is a 2021 Foam Talent, finalist for the 2021–22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship and Hyères 2019 Photography Grand Prix, recipient of a 2019 Creative Review Photography Annual and 2016 En Foco Photography Fellowship, and a former artist-in-residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York; Light Work, Syracuse, New York; the Camera Club of New York; and most recently, the International Studio and Curatorial Program, Brooklyn. Kha was named one of forty-seven artists in the inaugural Silver List in 2021. His work has been published in Foam, Creative Review, Dazed, Interview, McSweeney’s, Hyperallergic, Modern Painters, Slate, the Huffington Post, BUTT Magazine, BuzzFeed News, and Miranda July’s We Think Alone, and on the cover of Vice Magazine’s 2017 Photo Issue. He has collaborated with the Billboard Creative in Los Angeles, and exhibited in numerous group exhibitions including at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York; the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York; Yongkang Lu Art, Shanghai; and Hyères Festival, France. His first solo show was at Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, Oregon; it was followed by a solo exhibition at Baxter St at Camera Club of New York in 2019, where Kha was a 2018 workspace resident. He appeared in Laurie Simmons’s 2018 narrative feature My Art. Kha currently teaches photography at the New School, New York. He lives and works between New York City and Memphis.